If You Lived Here You'd Be Home By Now

Why We Traded the Commuting Life for a Little House on the Prairie

By: Christopher Ingraham

Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg

Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

The hilarious, charming, and candid story of writer Christopher Ingraham’s decision to uproot his life and move his family to Red Lake Falls, Minnesota, population 1,400 - the community he made famous as “the worst place to live in America” in a story he wrote for the Washington Post.

Like so many young American couples, Chris Ingraham and his wife Briana were having a difficult time making ends meet as they tried to raise their twin boys in the East Coast suburbs. One day, Chris - in his role as a “data guy” reporter at the Washington Post -stumbled on a study that would change his life. It was a ranking of America’s 3,000 plus counties from ugliest to most scenic. He quickly scrolled to the bottom of the list and gleefully wrote the words “The absolute worst place to live in America is (drumroll please)…Red Lake County, Minn.” The story went viral, to put it mildly.  

Among the reactions were many from residents of Red Lake County. While they were unflappably polite - it’s not called “Minnesota Nice” for nothing - they challenged him to look beyond the spreadsheet and actually visit their community. Ingraham, with slight trepidation, accepted. Impressed by the locals’ warmth, humor and hospitality - and ever more aware of his financial situation and torturous commute - Chris and Briana eventually decided to relocate to the town he’d just dragged through the dirt on the Internet.

If You Lived Here You’d Be Home by Now is the story of making a decision that turns all your preconceptions - good and bad - on their heads. In Red Lake County, Ingraham experiences the intensity and power of small-town gossip, struggles to find a decent cup of coffee, suffers through winters with temperatures dropping to 40 below zero, and unearths some truths about small-town life that the coastal media usually miss. It’s a wry and charming tale - with data! - of what happened to one family brave enough to move waaaay beyond its comfort zone.

©2019 Christopher Ingraham (P)2019 HarperAudio

Wish this would have been better.

I was really looking forward to this book. It was filled with a ton of statistics, which I enjoyed, but I was hoping for a more humorous rendition. It has quite a bit of cursing, which did nothing to add to the story, in fact I believe it took away from it. Maybe I was expecting more of a Garrison Keillor take on the book.

Lessons for Anyone

The author's story moving from suburban DC to small town Minnesota takes the concept of moving to smaller places to the extreme. I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, spent some time in Atlanta then moved back and experienced similar insights. His writing is funny and data driven (he writes data driven stories for the Washington Post). It's both a good family story and very informational about why it's a good idea to move to smaller population centers. You don't necessarily need to move to a tiny town on the tundra to achieve higher quality of life and lower cost of living. I think many people living along the coasts or huge cities could learn a lot from this book.

Interesting story made less palatable by distinct whining

I am a relatively new transplant to Minnesota, so I looked forward to listening to this book. While the people of Red Lake Falls are charming and hysterical in their efforts to engage the author, I kept thinking that it must be Midwestern resilience to put up with him. Serious whining!

Who knew the DC metro area would be expensive? (Rhetorical question…).

Who would have think it that buying a home, raising 2 children, and holding down 2 full-time jobs would be a difficult time of life? (Rhetorical question, again).

The whining… the whining….. for a guy who works with data, you’d think that he’d be well aware of the economic realities and challenges… but, you’d be wrong if his whining is to be considered.

The people of Red Lake Falls and the kids sound great…. I would have enjoyed the book- and still absorbed the life lessons the author apparently only learned after he whined his way from Maryland to Minnesota- with less whining and a
more conscious contemplation of the impact of the author’s life choices.

Language

while the story was interesting. My husband and I were very disappointed with the frequent use of foul language. Listen to the story made the language worse, because we could not read over it.

Loved it. As a millennial I Totally want to move there

I don’t have kids but lived the life of busy high pressure job with title in an NYC apt life for more than a decade. It’s not a sustainable life. A human being cannot live like that and not end up breaking something-it’ll either be health, money or relationships. Or all three.

This author describes precisely what the current issue is with the modern career structure that forces people and families to squeeze into the impossible demands of keeping up and living and just breathing without always chasing a deadline or always feeling like “you haven’t made it yet”

Minnesota here I come

Tangible truth.

I really like how he pointed out the different challenges of raising kids in the city vs. a small town. I enjoy the story a lot. Thanks for sharing your experience and family with us.

awesome

loved this story ,highly recommend!
Was a inside view of a mall town America life.

Relatable, yet full of curiosity

Really loved this title. Between the Ingraham's charming tales of family life are golden pieces of cultural curiosity. I believe this story was told very objectively and holds little persuasive jargon. A great adventure I'm grateful to have been let in on.

Wonderful story

Being a Minnesotan myself I laughed at some of his revelations. A beautiful love letter to small town life.

A real life awakens.

I loved it. The performance was wonderfully done. A refreshing real life awakening in an overly and sometimes shamefully "woke" era. Kiddos Chris!

It's ok, I guess

Maybe not the best book if you're a feminist, a vegan or, in general, very progressive. Imo, a few moments were a bit insensitive.

Some other parts were funny though.

If you want an overview of the advantages associated with moving to rural Minnesota, this book is for you.